Electric or electronic equipment installed at a remote location are often manipulated by pressing a button or key or the like on the equipment which is typically designed such that the pressing of the button should be done by a person applying a suitable force on the button until it is activated, e.g. to turn on or off some function. In some cases it is desirable to accomplish the pressing of the button without requiring that a person must be present at the equipment to press the button. The equipment may be located far away or may be difficult or virtually impossible to access for whatever reason, and there may further be a need to press buttons of equipment at several locations distributed over a large area where the equipment may belong to some infrastructure such as networks for communication, power distribution, or lightning. It may therefore be quite costly and time consuming to have one or more persons going to all these locations, e.g. just to press a button on the equipment.
Communication networks of today, being used for serving various communication devices, typically comprise numerous network nodes which are distributed across an extensive geographic area. For example, a network for radio communication typically comprises a multitude of base stations or radio nodes capable of radio communication with wireless devices. The base stations and possibly other nodes in the network are frequently maintained and manipulated to achieve adequate or optimal operation of the network, and it is often required that a person must go to a network node in order to perform some maintenance work on the network node such as repair, modification or reconfiguration of one or more components therein. If the network is comprised of a great number of such network nodes, much time and efforts must be spent if one or more persons must actually go to each one of the nodes to perform such maintenance work. An example of a radio node in a radio network is shown in FIG. 1 where a base station equipment 100 comprises a control panel with one or more buttons 102 which are designed to be manipulated by humans. The button(s) 102 may be provided with a protecting plastic cover, e.g. for outdoor installations, to prevent water and moisture to enter and impair the button and any electronics behind.
In some cases, the only action that needs to be done at a remote site is to press a button or key on the electric equipment, e.g. in order to turn off or on the equipment or some function thereof. Sometimes a great number of nodes in a radio network need to be turned off and on in order to reboot the nodes or the like. To avoid the need for a person to perform the pressing, it is of course possible to install some automatic apparatus that does the pressing by applying mechanical force on the button in response to a remotely triggered activation signal. This may be accomplished by installing an electromechanical actuator such as an electromagnet to act on the button.
However, it is difficult to configure such an electromagnet installation so that the force applied upon the button is sufficient but not too great. Buttons on electric equipment are often quite sensitive and fragile, and they can easily be damaged if the applied force is too harsh. If a protecting plastic cover is used, there is e.g. a risk that the cover is punctured by the actuator. An electromagnet of sufficient size to achieve the required force, e.g. 10 Newton or more, will perform a quite hard and rapid movement on the button which may result in too high kinetic energy on the button. Using such an electromechanical actuator thus requires a very precise installation to work well which may be costly and time-consuming to achieve. Moreover, electromagnets typically generate unwanted heat and magnetic field which also may be harmful for the equipment.